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Albert DeSalvo (1931–1973) was very likely the American serial killer known as the Boston Strangler. Although never actually charged with the killings, the crimes were attributed to DeSalvo based on his confession.
The horrific murders of seven senior citizens in London between April and May 1986 led the press to dub the killer the Stockwell Stranger. Kenneth Erskine was eventually tried and convicted of the killings.
In 2011, Anthony Sowell (1959–2021) was convicted of murdering 11 women. In each case, manual strangulation was cited as the cause of death.
Colombian-born serial killer Rory Enrique Conde was dubbed the Tamiami Trail Strangler for his modus operandi of picking up streetwalkers along the Tamiami Trail, a major east-west thoroughfare feeding downtown Miami.
The Cincinnati Strangler was the name given to a serial killer who assaulted and strangled seven mostly elderly women in Cincinnati, Ohio, between 1965 and 1966. A local resident, Posteal Laskey Jr. (1937–2007), was arrested for one of the killings and subsequently charged with murder.
In 1942, Melbourne's darkened streets were being terrorized by a serial killer, the so-called Brownout Strangler, so named for the city's wartime practice of dropping the electricity voltage to conserve energy. A US Army soldier named Eddie Leonski (1917–1942) became the chief suspect.
Between 1986 and 1994, Cape Town was shocked by the gruesome murders of numerous young boys, their bodies found dumped on the Cape Flats. A schoolteacher named Norman Simons was eventually arrested for one of the murders, a 10-year-old who in fact was the last victim of the so-called Station Strangler.
Grieveson, whose preferred method of murder was ligature strangulation, was convicted of murdering three people in 1996 and handed down three life sentences. In 2013, while in prison, he confessed to the murder of a fourth victim.
Wright strangled five women, all sex workers, in quick succession between October 30 and December 10, 2006. In 2008, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should never be released.
In one of America's most bizarre and sensational murder cases, not one but two men became known as the Hillside Strangler—Angelo Buono (pictured) and Kenneth Bianchi.
In one of the most disturbing cases in recent US criminal history, serial killer Dennis Rader confessed to the murder of 10 people, including four members of the same family, by strangulation using variously rope, the victim's belt, or his own hands.
Strangulation was the preferred method serial killer Gary Ridgway employed to murder his victims, with 49 women and girls dying this way at the hands of the man dubbed the Green River Killer.
William Bonin (1947–1996) murdered many of his victims using their own T-shirts as a ligature. He picked up young male hitchhikers thumbing lifts on roads in southern California, leading to Bonin being dubbed the Freeway Killer.
In 1973, South Wales and indeed the rest of the United Kingdom was shocked by the savage murders of three teenaged girls by a perpetrator who became known as the Saturday Night Strangler.
Between June 14, 1962, and January 4, 1964, 13 single women between the ages of 19 and 85 were murdered in the Boston area. Most were strangled in their apartments. However, no physical evidence substantiated DeSalvo's confession: he was tried and convicted on charges for earlier, unrelated crimes. DeSalvo himself was murdered in prison in 1973. In 2013, DeSalvo's corpse was exhumed and a DNA sample taken. Results proved that DeSalvo was the source of seminal fluid recovered at the scene of Mary Sullivan's 1964 murder, the Boston Strangler's final victim. The press are pictured outside Sullivan's apartment, where she was found murdered.
Erskine was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 40 years. In July 2009, following an appeal, Erskine's murder convictions were reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He is currently held in the maximum security Broadmoor Hospital.
Jack Unterweger (1950–1994) was the man known as the Vienna Strangler. He committed his first murder in 1974, a crime for which he served 14 years in prison. During his incarceration, Unterweger had begun to write, and after his release in 1990 he found minor fame as a playwright and journalist.
However, within months of his release Unterweger embarked on a killing spree not just in Austria, but in West Germany, the then-Czechoslovakia, and the United States. He was eventually arrested in Florida and later extradited back to Austria. In a sensational trial that gripped the nation, Unterweger was convicted of murdering nine women in four countries, though he was suspected of killing at least 12. All the victims had been strangled. Unterweger was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. During his first night behind bars, the serial killer hanged himself in his cell.
Sowell was charged with the murders after the bodies of his victims were discovered in and around his home. In 2011, Sowell, identified as the notorious Cleveland Strangler, was sentenced to death. In 2021, while on death row, he died in prison from a terminal illness.
Conde cruised the Tamiami Trail in search of his victims. He was eventually tried and convicted of strangling to death six people. Sentenced to die in 2000, Conde is currently on death row in Florida.
Though based purely on circumstantial evidence and witness testimony, Posteal Laskey Jr. was nonetheless convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. In 1972, the US Supreme Court commuted Laskey's sentence to life imprisonment. He died behind bars in 2007.
Simons collected his moniker after it became apparent that most of his alleged victims were lured away from stations. In all, 22 children were discovered strangled to death. In 1995, Simons was convicted of killing the 10-year-old and sentenced to life in prison. He was never charged with any of the other killings, and nobody else was ever arrested. Doubts about whether or not Simons is the Station Strangler persist today, a mystery that has haunted South Africa for decades.
The Sunderland Strangler is the sobriquet given to Steven Grieveson, a British serial killer who murdered four teenaged boys in a series of killings committed between 1990 and 1994 in Sunderland, England. The killer's hunting grounds were abandoned allotments set in and around the city.
The Suffolk Strangler, later identified as Steve Wright, carried out a series of murders during a short but shocking killing spree during the final months of 2006 in and around Ipswich in Suffolk, England.
The serial killers terrorized Los Angeles between October 1977 and February 1978, murdering 10 women and girls ranging in age from 12 to 28. Kenneth Bianchi (pictured) also confessed to killing an additional two women in Washington state. The two men were cousins as well as accomplices. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with Bueno dying behind bars in 2002.
Rader styled himself as BTK—"bind, torture, kill." In a shocking episode during his televised trial, Rader outlined in chilling and dispassionate detail the methods he employed in dispatching his victims. He made no apologies. He is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences.
Nilsen strangled his victims typically using a ligature. His crimes only came to light after neighbors complained of a foul smell drifting from the drains at his residence. Nilsen had flushed the remains of some of his dismembered victims down the toilet! The Muswell Hill Murderer died in prison in 2018 while serving a whole life tariff.
Ridgway's dumping ground was the banks of the Green River in Washington state. He was arrested in 2001 and eventually convicted, with DNA profiling helping to snare the killer. He is currently serving life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Bonin confessed to murdering at least 21 people, and was suspected of killing several more. Convicted on 14 counts of first-degree murder, Bonin was sentenced to death in 1982 and was executed by lethal injection in 1996.
The case went cold for decades until familial DNA profiling in 2002 identified the killer as Joseph Kappen (1941–1990). Kappen had died having never been arrested for his crimes. His body was exhumed and his DNA positively matched that with samples taken from the remains of his victims. The result also established Kappen as the killer of a fourth young woman. The Kappen investigation was the first in the world to utilize familial DNA tracing in order to posthumously identify a serial killer.
Roger Kibbe (1939–2021) was an American serial killer known as the 1-5 Strangler, so named for the Interstate highway system around Sacramento where Kibbe plied his evil trade beginning in 1977.
In 2009, Kibbe was convicted of murdering six women, tying them up with parachute rigging chord (he was a keen skydiver) before garroting them using the same material. Kibbe died in prison aged 81 in 2021.
Sources: (Britannica) (News24) (CBS News)
Eddie Leonski was stationed with his unit in Melbourne's Royal Park. Off duty, however, he roamed the neighborhood with murder on his mind. Leonski strangled three women, his motive for the killings a twisted fascination with female voices. After his arrest, Leonski was court-martialed for murder under American military law, sentenced to death, and executed.
Strangulation is the preferred method of murder for many serial killers. So much so, in fact, that some of the most notorious crimes in modern history have been named after the perpetrator's modus operandi— the Boston Strangler being an infamous example. But who else has the dubious privilege of being described as a strangler after their despicable deed?
Click through and check out these disturbing case files.
The most notorious stranglers in history
Killers whose preferred MO is strangulation
LIFESTYLE Crime
Strangulation is the preferred method of murder for many serial killers. So much so, in fact, that some of the most notorious crimes in modern history have been named after the perpetrator's modus operandi— the Boston Strangler being an infamous example. But who else has the dubious privilege of being described as a strangler after their despicable deed?
Click through and check out these disturbing case files.